Ok so after my last $60 fill up I decided to see how my driving style plays into my gas mileage and I am quite shocked. I usually am pretty "spirited" driver and driving an MCS I should be . I am basing my conclusion using my OBC (not sure how exact it is) and my odometer.

Usually after filling up I reset my odometer which usually reads around 260-280 miles and my OBC usually has a range till empty around 20-30 miles. This basically what I have experienced since the car was new.

A couple of things my commute is from the east bay to Palo Alto which has a round trip of about 30miles a day.

After my last fill up I started shifting around 2K and go from 1st to 3rd to 5th and 6th on street and freeway. While on the freeway keeping around 60mph which is pretty hard not to mention boring as hell. Anyways I have been keeping track and so far my odometer reads 145 miles and my OBC reads 280 miles till empty. Now its almost a game for me to see how far I can go ala Kramer/Seinfeld.

Like I said I dont know how accurate my OBC is but it will be interesting to see what my odometer reads at the next fill up.

 

I would think that you will see a good jump in fuel ecconomy. The fast starts sucks the most gas with the least gain.

 

use your trip odometer instead. start at zero on your next fillup.
on the fill up after that look at how many miles you've driven divided by the number of gallons you needed to fill up. that'll give you exactly what your mileage is.

 

Yup, a whole lot more accurate than using the OBC I think.

 

A heavy foot requires a very thick wallet!!!!!!!

 

Been doing something very similar with my MCSC. Right now I'm doing about 30 MPG on my 10 mile suburban commute (Country roads and small towns). Not quite as visceral but still somewhat satisfying to see what you can get out of a car.

 

haha i play this game all the time! lol it's very interesting to see how far you can get on one tank

 

that was a good seinfeld

 

A light right foot; no jackrabbit starts; drive SMOOTHLY; use cruise control; stick to the speed limit ----perhaps not nearly as much fun as more aggressive driving, but it makes all the difference as far as fuel mileage is concerned.

 

I reset the trip odometer when I filled up. I'm at 380 miles now and will easily be over 400 tomorrow when I fill up again.I have a 10 mile stretch of 50 MPH road that I take in 6th gear. The tach revs at 2000 RPM and the fuel economu for this stretch is just stupid high averaging about 40 MPG according to the OBC. 70MPH on the freeway gets about 35 and tachs at the 3,000 mark. Slowing down to 60 drops the RPM by about 500 and gives a significant boost in economy. The closer you can keep to the 2,000 mark, the better your ecomony. The only thing that sucks though is you sacrifice fun. :(

 

i try to maintain a speed limit but see how far i can go in full tank... BUT failed a few times as i cant help mylsef to go fast in the highway...am i the only one with heave foot?

 

I could give a spit about the highway. It's the twisty back roads that tempt my lead foot.

 

The OBC is way off most of the time anyways... Its drastically optimistic.

 

Using the OBC MPG readout I've been getting a consistent 31.7 for the last 3 tanks. I reset it the OBC at every fillup.

Around here we have 10% ethanol in all of our fuels. It is also oxegenated. There are a few stations around that carry a premium fuel that is no ethanol, non-oxegenated, but it is $.10 more and hard to come by. (Labeled for off road use only).
I filled up the last two tanks with this wonder fuel and now I'm clocking 33.5mpg. So a little maths and even though I'm paying more per gallon I'm getting more miles per $$.

The reason I decided to do this was after reading an article where people were putting regular fuel in when the manual stated premium was required. They were saying how a little pinging and sluggishness off the line was ok because they were saving so much money. I say BS... and those folks need to do the math!

Next step for me is to start short shifting and slipping into 4th gear while driving around town.

Personally just driving the Mini saves me a ton of cash. My regular ride is just barely clocking 11mpg. Needless to say that's parked for a while unless I need to haul something huge or dirty.

 

when the engine turns over... that's when my heavy foot comes alive... it's a curse

 

when the engine turns over... that's when my heavy foot comes alive... it's a curse

 

I've got a bit of a heavy foot too & have tried the 60 mph freeway running and very easy accelerating. It was always my understanding that a potential tradeoff to lightfooting the gas and really short shifting is it will carbon up the motor real quick (at least that's my justification for giving the car an 'Italian tuneup' every now & then).

 

oxygenated gas helps burn gas

oxygen is what burns gas.

10% ethanol has great octane rating and is nice and stable. It also removes all water from the system. After a long time of reading on the subject, not having 10% ethanol isnt really that great. Higher octane is achieved using more nasty chemicals like toluene then. Ethanol is nicer for the environment than toluene. In the fruity state of California, toluene is a banned possible carcinogen (they ban possible ones there not just actual ones). So, burning grain alcohol is just obviously better for the environment as far as polution goes. Also, and most left out of the convo on ethanol (because most ethanol proponents dont know how to drive sports cars it seems) is that ethanol has a very high octane! Yes, you can boost your octane by using ethanol! it doesnt detonate as easy when compressed. It has a lot of energy but it just doesnt have a lot of vapor pressure like icky regular gasoline distillates have, so you cant easily just substitute it over 10-15%. also, at 10% it does not errode anything. Also, some cars race on ethanol. I just want to put in every fact I can to make people not be fooled to thinking that racing fuel doesnt use ethanol because its not as bad-***. It is, its just that non factory racing cars sometimes cant use ethanol for various reasons.

Heck, you can use vegetable oil if you set it up right.

racing gas that has no ethanol in it is for a rare few technologically dismal street race cars. Sunoco makes a great 100 octane that is street legal. It is the safest for your mini. Use that straight, its kinda sick. It has ethanol in it, and some other neat stuff to keep your car lasting longer than one race of dirtbag glory

go to sunoco's website and read up on the different flavors of gas. the first one in their chart is a mini friendly one.

A mini is designed to run optimally on 105-110 octane. Some will say that above 95 octane withough a computer rework, the mini cannot utilize it. Some say its 96 octane. The physics of the engine and its very high compression ratio mean that if the timing was not retarded at all, the thing could utilize 105-110 octane quite well. I never have put less than 93 in my mini, and also I always use shell V-power. So far my car runs super smooth and my mileage is in mid 30's for a NY city area. I dont drive in heavy traffic though, I hate people.

 

All I know is that is gets really annoying when Prius's keep passing me while I cruise........C'est that vie!

 

Some people drive those things like race cars. Driving a Prius at 90mph in a 65 zone is counterproductive lol

 

wow. yeah, what is the point of that?

they dont look/feel that sturdy to handle such speeds for that long.

i think most people get prius's because they think it costs them less.

Spending 20+ thousand dollars to save 20 dollars a week in gas confuses me.

 

Here in the Puget Sound corridor of I-5 we have Hyper-drafters in Prius's. They are really a pain in the a$$. Our NBC afiliate did a story on them. They'll come right up to my backend (as close as they can) and try and draft. If you tap your brakes, they buzz off looking for they're next draft. I've now seen several Prius owners with a "Hyper-Draft" sticker on them.

Not real smart...

 

It's not oxygenated year round, it's only done in the cold weather months to help reduce pollution caused by engines that run in open loop longer due to the increase in warm up times. When in open loop operation, your ECU runs at a predetermined air/fuel mixture. For optimal engine efficiency and emmision control you want to be in closed loop where the O2 sensors determine a/f mixtures.

Typically, oxygenation refers to the fact that the gasoline is mixed with ethanol. Ethanol is great because it reduces the need for foreign oil, is renewable and burns cleaner, but the trade off is in energy efficiency since it takes a larger amount of ethanol to produce the same power as gasoline.

Here's a fun read unless you already have a migraine. http://www.epa.gov/oms/regs/fuels/ostp-3.pdf

 

I tried the same two weeks ago and it worked great. I got 320 miles instead of the usual 280... Low RPMs shifts, Turn off the car when getting to a red light or when stopping for more than 30 seconds and definitely... low speed... Sometimes could me kind of boring, but not as painful as filling the tank!

 

It makes a big difference. I registered 26 MPG in a mixed highway/streets commute. Changing to hypermiling driving techniques (not the extreme ones like drafting semis) I got to 32. Using the current consumption display is very educational.